The Tale of Desperaux (Kate diCamillo)

 

This is one of those books I should have read years ago. I have often heard it talked about but hadn't read it until now. I did get to hear Timothy Basil Eyring speak once though (maybe in 2012?? It was a Kaleidoscope Conference....a conference I still fondly remember!) and he totally sold me on the book. 

There are some beautiful themes in this book: forgiveness, redemption, dreaming, love, and of course light...and more.

I read this aloud to my class. I was so struck by the beautiful words. I kept a sticky note pad nearby and mastered the art of reading while grabbing a sticky note and depositing it on the page. These are some of my noted spots:

p. 55 The dungeon! The rats! Desperaux's small heart sank all the way to the tip of his tail. There would be no light in the dungeon. No stained-glass windows. No library and no books. There would be no Princess Pea.   

p. 81 Gregory: "...Stories are Light. Light is precious in a world so dark."

p. 181 He dreamt of the stained-glass windows and the dark of the dungeon. In Despereaux's dream, the light came to life, brilliant and glorious, in the shape of a knowing swinging a sword. The knight fought the dark.

And the dark took many shapes. First the dark was his mother, uttering phrases in French. And then the dark became his father beating the drum. The dark was Furlough wearing a black hoot and shaking his head no. After the dark became a huge rat smiling a smile that was evil and sharp.
(Writing assignment: What is your dark and your light?)

p. 186 No one would ever, not for one blind minute, mistake Mig for the princess or the princess for Mig. But Miggery Sow, as I pointed out to you before, was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And read, too, she wanted so desperately to become a princess. She wanted, oh, how she wanted. And it was because of this terrible wanting that she was able to believe in Roscuro's plan with every ounce of her heart.

p. 207 Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love, a powerful, wonderful thing.

p. 208 But still, here are the words Desperaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, "I forgive you, Pa."
And he said those words because he sensed that it was the only way to save his own heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.

p. 217 "Thread," said the threadmaster. He shrugged and took another loud bite of celery. "Nothing more. Nothing less.  But I pretend, friend, I pretend, And what, May I ask, do you intend to do with the thread?"
"Save the princess."
"Ah yes, the princess. The beautiful princess. That's how this whole story started, isn't it."
I have to save her. There is no one but me to do it."
"It seems to be that way with most things. No one to do the really disagreeable jobs except oneself. And how exactly, will you use a spook of thread to save a princess?"
"A rat has taken her and hidden her in the dungeon, so I have to go back to the dungeon, and it is full of twists and turns and hidden chambers." 

Goodreads says:

A brave mouse, a covetous rat, a wishful serving girl, and a princess named Pea come together in Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Medal–winning tale.

Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl who harbors a simple, impossible wish. These three characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and, ultimately, into each other's lives. What happens then? As Kate DiCamillo would say: Reader, it is your destiny to find out.

Shouting At The Rain (Lynda Mullaly Hunt)

 

This would be a lovely story to read at the beginning of the year as part of our friendship unit - but only with a class that is quite mature. Trouble is, that's hard to know at the beginning of the school year. Not sure if this would make a good read aloud for grade three. There are some big topics in there - abandonment being a big one. I enjoyed it quite immensely. It was the book for my Children's Lit book club. Now, knowing it is full of anagrams, I am keen to read it again with a different perspective and that inside knowledge.

I looked for sign posts while I was reading. These are my notes:

Goodreads says:

Delsie loves tracking the weather--lately, though, it seems the squalls are in her own life. She's always lived with her kindhearted Grammy, but now she's looking at their life with new eyes and wishing she could have a "regular family." Delsie observes other changes in the air, too--the most painful being a friend who's outgrown her. Luckily, she has neighbors with strong shoulders to support her, and Ronan, a new friend who is caring and courageous but also troubled by the losses he's endured. As Ronan and Delsie traipse around Cape Cod on their adventures, they both learn what it means to be angry versus sad, broken versus whole, and abandoned versus loved. And that, together, they can weather any storm. 

The Rumpelstiltskin Problem (Vivian VandeVelde)

 

This is a great book for teaching story versions! Each story is quite unique! In one the girl is out to marry the single prince and tries to use made up threats from Rumpelstilskin (who has a wife and quite enough children) to get her wish. In another the girl's father is a foolish boaster who gets his daughter stuck in the castle having to figure out how to turn straw into gold. There are 6 stories and each one is quite unique. 

Goodreads says:

Vivian Vande Velde is whimsically clever in her six recreations of the Rumpelstiltskin story. With divine humor, she reveals the absurdity of the fairy tale. The book is coy, innovative and alluring.

What was with that bizarre fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin? Why would a miller claim that his daughter can spin straw into gold? Why would the king believe him? And why would a odd little man that can spin straw into gold do so in exchange for a tiny gold ring? The story is just silly.
In an attempt to make sense of it all, Vivian Vande Velde retells this wayward fairy tale, providing six alternative takes on the classic account. All six are woven into rich chronicles - all of which are far more intriguing and revealing than the original tale.

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

 It took me a long time to finish Akin, my book club book, but I finally did! I'm happy to dig into the pile of books I have out from the library right now. About a month ago I was thinking maybe I should quit reading so many books at one time - and for about a week I stuck to that commitment. However, there are books for different times and different places. I have given up on the idea of reading just one book at a time.

This week, these are my first focus:

This is the professional development book I'm reading right now. Don't ask me about the rat analogy. I haven't got to that explanation yet.

Just like when I read The Wild Robot on my own, my students insisted we read The Wild Robot Escapes. I really didn't want to read another one aloud, but there was no talking them out of it - not that I tried that hard. It's pretty hard to read The Wild Robot and not move on to the next book. We have to find out what happened to Roz!

This is the book I'm reading for my Children's Lit book club, the book club that brings me so much joy!

This is the book I'm reading during DEAR time. I've moved through it slowly because I have sometimes been pulled in different directions during DEAR time. It's important to me to be reading when my students are reading though, so I am recommitting.

Akin (Emma Donoghue)

 

I had a copy of Room, but I never did read it. This was my first experience with Emma Donoghue. 

One aspect I thought was interesting was family secrets. Noah knows negative things about Michael's father, but he keeps it to himself. I wondered if that was really fair to Michael. Is it better to be honest?  

(i.e. the maroon chip) p. 213: One the back, Ninety Days. but anyone could get hold of a plastic token: buy them by the dozen online, pick one up off the sidewalk. It proved nothing, except to a gullible child.....it could just possibly have been true: if ever his nephew had made a real effort to sober up, surely it would have been when he'd just sent the woman he loved to prison for five years, leaving his son motherless. An even bigger pity, if Victor had made it to the three-month mark before his final lapse.

The irony is that after those thoughts, Noah goes on to say that chemists have an unusually high death rate: a long tradition of blinding and scarring and poisoning ourselves. 

How is that any different than Michael's father, really?

Another interesting thing about this book was how every part of a family influences someone. Sometimes we think we're a black sleep or not like the rest of our family, but is that really the case. In the story, Michael is really not that different from Noah. Noah keeps hearing his wife's voice, as if a conversation is going on with her throughout the story. 

Another interesting connection to that is Noah's search for answers about his mother. Was she involved with all the missing children? Was she a helper or a snitcher? Also, the children represent connections to our past. 

p. 229 Imagine if you forgot your real name and date of birth, and when the war was over you couldn't remember who you really were, or find....any of your family who were left?"
"I'd remember." Michael's voice was stern.
"Well, some of them were just toddlers, So Abadi and Rosenstock, what they did was, they wrote down all the kids' true facts, made three identical cards for each, with photographs, fingerprints, addresses, relations, the whole works."
The paradox was that these cards had endangered the entire Marcel Network, hiders and hidden alike. But then, it wasn't fair to save a child's life at the cost of stripping him of who he was.


The connection between generations was another theme. On p. 220 Noah is showing Michael photos from a book. He shows him the first faked photos, dated in 1840 as well as selfies where a guy posed himself as a drowned man and Michael quickly responds that he does that too and flips through his camera roll to show himself as a corpse on grass. Another examples was on p. 222 when Noah is trying to explain the law of closure in photography (the viewer fills in what they don't see, what's missing) and relates it to the FedEx logo. Michael replies, "The arrow. I never didn't see the arrow"....knowing right away what he is talking about. 

p. 237 Michael's tattoo: F.O.E. (Family Over Everything)

Then there's the irony of Noah saving Michael just as perhaps his mother saved Jewish children during the war? Or did she? 

Goodreads says:

In her first contemporary novel since Room, bestselling author Emma Donoghue returns with her next masterpiece, a brilliant tale of love, loss and family. A retired New York professor’s life is thrown into chaos when he takes his great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother's wartime secrets.

Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into taking him along to France.

This odd couple, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, argue about everything from steak haché to screen time, and the trip is looking like a disaster. But as Michael's ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past, both of them come to grasp the risks that people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.

Written with all the tenderness and psychological intensity that made Room a huge bestseller, Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a boy who unpick their painful story and start to write a new one together.

I'm really looking forward to our book club discussion on this one. I'm sure the ladies in our group will have many more insights.

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

 I follow a lot of book blogs and a number of them post what they're reading each week. It's fun to see what they have in the works. They help me feel better about my inability to just read one book at a time. Unleashing Readers, Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers are some I like to check out. There are always good things happening there!

Last week I had a few audio books come in that boosted my book joy. It was a great week of reading. 

This week I'm still reading The Rumpelstilskin Problem and really loving it. The author is brilliant. The range of approaches to the story is hilarious.

We are almost finished out read aloud of The Wild Robot. My students got wind that there is a book 2 so I might be committed to that one. They're REALLY into it!

Akin is my book club book this month. So far, I'm quite enjoying it. The chapters are super long though.....what's wrong with short chapters?!

Someday When My Cat Can Talk (Caroline Lazo)

 

Story told in rhyme of a cat's wanderings. 

Goodreads says:

THIS CHARMING, CHILD-CENTRIC book offers a glimpse into a cat’s exciting “other” life. In a little girl’s fantasy, her cat sneaks away, hops a ship, and sails off to Europe! And someday, when he can talk, he’ll tell her all about the amazing things he discovered there . . . like whether or not British cats drink tea . . . and how he strutted down the runway in a Paris fashion show. With facts about each place the cat visits included simply in the rhyming text, and in more detail at the end (including a map charting his route), this is sure to provide a great introduction to travel.